Commodore SS a hit: NASCAR boss

Commodore is on the verge of being a serious hit in the USA. That's the verdict of one of GM's largest dealers and NASCAR team boss, Rick Hendrick.

The race team and multi-dealership owner Hendrick says he’s “real excited” about Holden’s next-generation Commodore VF that will be sold in the US as a Chevrolet SS and raced as a NASCAR.

While Chevrolet intends the Australian-built car to be a limited edition in America, Hendrick says its participation in NASCAR could generate greater sales than envisaged.

“I’ve driven it. It’s a heck of a car,” said Hendrick, head of the Hendrick Automotive Group [HAG] that sells Chevrolets among its 20 nameplates in the USA.

“It’s got the LS3 motor and the interior is extremely nice.”

The SS, or Super Sport, will go on sale in America in the second half of next year, several months after its race debut in NASCAR’s marquee event, the Daytona 500 in Florida in late February.

HAG operates 79 dealerships, including 10 Chevrolet sites, and sells more than 120,000 vehicles a year – more than Holden does in Australia – with annual revenue of about US$5 billion.

It employs about 7000 people in 12 US states and services more than 1.3 million cars and trucks a year.

There has been speculation of Hendrick starting a special vehicles operation based on Australia’s HSV around the launch of the SS. The Holden-based car will be the only V8 rear-wheel-drive car in Chevrolet’s model range.

The tycoon’s race team, Hendrick Motorsports, has won NASCAR’s Sprint Cup 10 times and this year chalked up its 200th race victory. It has averaged about 10 wins a year in the 36-race series over the past decade and yesterday one of its four drivers, Kasey Kahne, won the Coca-Cola 600 in Hendrick’s hometown, Charlotte in North Carolina.

Hendrik's other three drivers are five-time series champion Jimmie Johnson, four-time champion Jeff Gordon and NASCAR’s most popular competitor, Dale Earnhardt Junior.

Hendick told Bob Pockrass of America’s Sporting News that the Chevrolet SS, which will replace the Impala as General Motors’ representative model in NASCAR, “will energise the fans”.

The road and racecars look identical, he said, unlike the existing first generation of NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow, which are generic and differentiated only by grilles and badges.

Hendrick said the connection between the SS road and racecars was “a logical fit”.

“They’re one and the same. As a dealer I’m real excited,” he said.

A picture of the SS being tested at Florida’s Homestead-Miami Speedway in a chequered livery was released in mid-May.

Hendrick said he had no worries about the SS being Australian-made.

“Where they’re assembled really doesn’t make that much difference,” he said.

“A lot of the components are built here [in the USA]. Just because the car is assembled in Australia, the engine plants and all those things are here. Anything you buy today [in the American car market], if it’s built here its parts are from all over the world.

“We [GM] truly are a global company, a global production for cars, so where they’re assembled really doesn’t make that much difference,” he stated.

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